As important, if not more so, than the physical features of the land is the title history. Here the inquiry is analogous to a genealogy that one might do on a particular person. Instead of tracing back ancestors, one traces back the conveyances that brought the property to its current ownership. Generally speaking most modern day parcels resulted from the subdividing of larger parcels over the years. The task in gathering the title history that may be relevant on access is to trace the title for your property back as far as necessary to the point where it was part of the same tract of land as your neighbor’s lands. Ideally, you are trying to find a point in time where the land you now own and the property that separates your property from a public right‐of‐way were all part of the same parcel. Other important information that can be found in the title history is sometimes found in old plats. Plats are survey diagrams prepared to show the boundaries of properties being conveyed. Often the property plat is referred to in the deed which conveys the property. Examination of the plats of property in your chain of title (they are usually recorded along with the first deed that refers to them), and sometimes in the chain of title of adjoining property, may disclose old roads. Sometimes the old roads shown on such plats were located such that they could have provided access to the property you now own.
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